Insects · Hymenoptera · Formicidae

Argentine Ant

Linepithema humile

Not Evaluated

It has not yet been assessed against the IUCN criteria. See full glossary

The Argentine ant, described by Gustav Mayr in 1868, is a species native to north-eastern Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and southern Brazil, but it has spread to every continent except Antarctica and has reached isolated places a long way from its natural range, such as Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand and Norway. The queens measure some 4 mm and the workers between 2 and 3 mm. There is no division into castes among the workers.

Diet

Omnivore

Combines animal and plant food depending on availability.

Activity

Diurnal

Active mainly during the day.

Social structure

Colony

Lives in large concentrations, often for breeding reasons.

Sighting difficulty

Unknown

GrasslandOmnivore Diurnal Colonial Insect Grassland

60countries10same family

Fun facts

GeneralIt forms supercolonies thousands of kilometres across, within which the workers never fight one another.
It is unicolonial: workers from nests hundreds of kilometres apart do not attack one another, and that lack of internal competition is what makes it so dominant.
The main European supercolony stretches some 6,000 km along the Mediterranean coast, from Portugal and Spain to Italy; in eastern Spain there is a second supercolony, the Catalan one, and workers from the two do fight to the death.
The introduced supercolonies descend from very few founding individuals, in some cases barely a dozen, which explains their extremely low genetic diversity.
It displaces native ants, protects the aphids that damage plants and comes into houses.